An Energy Efficient Routing Algorithm for Wireless Body Area Network

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are emerging as one of the newest forms of Wireless Sensor Networks. In WBANs, sensor nodes accumulate human physiological data and transmit it to the sink node. However, transmission of physiological data to the sink node over a mobile route becomes a very daunting task for sensors due to their limited battery power. Moreover, replacement of critical sensor nodes is a major challenge in such scenarios. In order to increase network lifetime, some routing protocols have been proposed in the literature, but the majority of them are focused on coverage distance and residual energy of sensor nodes. In this work, we will propose an energy efficient routing algorithm for WBANs that will take into consideration two additional attributes (node criticality and communication count) along with the above stated attributes. These four parameters in the proposed algorithm will result in enhancement of working lifetime of the network via less energy consumption in comparison to existing routing protocols.